Determining an optimum percentage of defendants to release before trial: Applying inventory modeling concepts to legal policy problems

Some aspects of determining what proportion of defendants to release before trial are discussed using cost and other data obtained from judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and bail project directors in twenty-three cities. Various holding costs, releasing costs, and percentages of defendants held are used. Smooth curves are fitted to the data points to determine at what percentage of defendants held the total cost curve bottoms out. The effects of varying the costs and the cities, the causal implications of why the optimum percentage differs substantially from the actual percentage, and the policy implications of using the analysis in pretrial release policy and in reducing the total costs are shown. Ways in which the model can be expanded to obtain insights into the optimum level of various kinds of due process and law enforcement are also indicated.